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Nancy Josephson Liff

About the Author

Nancy Josephson Liff writes about health, education, parenting, child development, and women&#8217;s and family issues. She has three children. Her youngest is in college. She recently took up archery—now that everyone is safely out of the house.

About the Blog

WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Every year, accidents involving childproof spray bottles for household products send thousands of young kids to the hospital.

A 2010 study by researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio found that while injuries for all household cleaners dropped 46 percent over the past two decades, injuries from spray bottle dispensers remained high.

The problem: Cleaning agents can cause poisoning and chemical burns in young children. And clever young children are finding their way around the child-proof tops.

Enter Lara McKenzie, Ph.D. the lead researcher for the 2010 study. She has designed a new bottle that could prevent as many as 6,000 injuries a year. In a video she prepared for the hospital, she said that translates to saving 18 kids a day from chemical injuries — roughly the number of kids in a preschool class.

McKenzie's new dispenser has not only a forward-facing trigger like you see in traditional bottles but also another trigger that juts out from the back. An adult has to squeeze both triggers at the same time to dispense the fluids. And that's just too big a job for little hands.

Fox News reported that while some spray bottles have devices that can be turned and serve as on/off switches, kids can manipulate those pieces and get around that product design.

But McKenzie's dispenser also has another feature: A mechanism that locks the sprayer automatically when you release the trigger. "There's nothing you have to do to lock it," McKenzie said.

The researcher and her team are now seeking a partner to manufacture their childproof bottle, so the new design isn't available yet. In the meantime, parents must be vigilant and play it safe. To prevent accidental poisoning lock up all your household chemicals and keep your eyes on little children.

And when your kids are older, do what I did for my children: I took a big, fat black permanent marker to every cleaning solution bottle and wrote the word no on it . . . giant capital letters.

Enough said.

How do you prevent accental poisoning from household cleaning products in your home? Tell us below in the comments section!